The Girl in Twilight – Ep. 5

Well, I think it’s safe to say that this is the cycle The Girl in Twilight plans on going with. Teenagers venturing into strange worlds, one of them becomes a Magical Girl and fights a corrupt adult, rinse and repeat. It’s not a bad concept on paper, it kind of reminds me of Persona even. What I will say though is that it sure has a strange way of executing it.

Much like with Nana’s adventure in Love and Lies, it’s the stuff that strictly adheres to the parallel world that’s most entertaining. Sexy Yu arrives to the scene with a carriage pulled by a motorcycle and Asuka impulsively joins the heist against Base Yu’s objections. Chloe and Nana convince Red Dead Asuka that she has the wrong crooks so she makes them assist in an ambush against the actual robbers. Everyone gets arrested and is sentenced by a corrupt judge to duel each other to the death. How can I not look at all this insanity and not have a good time? My only gripe is that you don’t actually see a real duel happen. I know no one in the club would actually fire their guns but can you imagine?

One thing I will give credit is that this episode did a decent job with Mia’s character development. It does breeze through it a bit but there’s at least no contrivances like there was with Nana’s arc. Mia tries being a deputy sheriff for a day and while she works hard at it, she clearly is out of her element. It’s only when her friends are in danger during the duel does she truly get to be the hero she has dreamed of becoming. Part of me finds it silly that she actually expected a magical cassette tape to appear in her friends but I can let it slide as it does demonstrate her newfound confidence.

Alas, this anime must lose me in some way and big surprise, it’s when the magical girl stuff kicks in. I wouldn’t mind it if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s very out of the blue. You can get so caught up in the parallel world itself that it gets really easy to forget that fighting inter-dimensional parasites is the ultimate goal for these girls. And I hate to say it but the action isn’t really all that good. The CGI alone is an eyesore but the choreography is too reliant on being flashy with characters constantly moving, punching, kicking, and firing their weapons without a care in the world. It is, however, a shame that you don’t get to see Nana fight again. I know Mia had her cassette player but she could’ve thrown it over to Nana and then they both could fight wit Seriouska. I hope that this doesn’t become a thing where you don’t see the girls fight again until some time much later.

And Mia’s Magical Girl outfit…oof, I could write an entire post on why it’s bad. The green and yellow color scheme with a random tint of purple, the cowboy boots that reach up to her thighs, all those bullets circling around her shoulders. At the very least, I wish the character designers kept the red color scheme her deputy sheriff uniform had.

I still don’t know if I’m 100% committed to covering The Girl inTwilight. To be honest, I have enough shows for Fall 2018 and balancing between the blog and work has been tricky this season. That said, this show is proving to be an oddity, one that boggles my mind so much that not talking about it would actually be pretty difficult.